I pinched the excess powder off my nose, glancing at the crowded bathroom and flushing stalls, wondering who had heard me do drugs in the corner. “Are we okay?”
“No,” he said through gritted teeth. “We need to grab Silas and switch hotels. They know you’re in Vegas, which means they know the two of you are traveling together.”
Shit, shit, shit.
I had two choices in that moment: Dissociate, or collapse.
There was too much at stake. I couldn’t fall apart now.
Merit and Maribelle shook hands in that instant. We grabbed Silas in the lobby and yanked him toward the taxi stand, demanding that the first car take us to the Cosmopolitan. We didn’t have the luxury of leaving the city, but the change in venue would put at least two miles between us and the accidentally pinged location.
“I should have warned you sooner,” Silas murmured beside me in the cab. “I should have protected you. I should have—”
“What’s done is done,” Azrames said coolly. “Don’t bring her more anxiety than you already are by being an angel atthe end of the world.”
I stared out the window, letting the colors blur amidst the baking concrete, the flashing neon, the reddish, desert earth. It was too early for an existential break.
We finished the ride in silence. When the car came to a stop, I had to salvage what I could. The proverbial hourglass was running out of sand, and the world counted on our success.
Merit and Maribelle shared their masks as they marched into the line at the Cosmo, given that there was only one honeymooning couple ahead of them. When it was Merit-Maribelle’s turn at the counter, they leaned forward conspiratorially to whisper with the concierge.
Showtime.
I straightened my shoulders only to soften them. I puckered my lips, if only slightly. My brows met in the middle. I’d perfected the wealthy-person cosplay years before I’d had a dime to my name, and I knew exactly how my expression would land.
“I don’t mean to embarrass anyone here, but it seems the Cosmopolitan has lost my reservation. Merit Finnegan? Could you look me up in the system?”
The concierge got halfway through my name before stopping in the middle of her sentence. Her cheeks flushed. Her lips parted. Her eyes darted between me and the screen before repeating, “Merit Finnegan?”
I nodded. I’d rolled the dice when stepping into this line, but she certainly fit the role of my target demographic. I passed her two forms of ID. One was with my driver’s license, sporting only my legal name, and the other was my card for Inkhouse, with both my legal name and pen name.
She nodded hastily before picking up her landline.
“Do you have to do that everywhere we go?” Silas asked.
Azrames leaned against the counter. “Yes, she does.”
The concierge looked up at me as I snorted, then did my best to cover it with a cough. I suppressed the laugh as I signedmy name to the bill and made my way to the first tower. The Cosmopolitan had been at capacity, but elite chains always set aside a few rooms for celebrity drop-ins and one-percenters, just in case.
I tried to wave the first crowded elevator away, but a woman in her thirties recognized me and dragged the entire elevator out for photos. After her selfie, she said, “I’m so sorry about the senator doxing you. Super fucked up. We’re with you.”
Oh. Right.
The stakes were so high, I kept forgetting the very human fate that had pushed me to the Nordic realm in the first place. Republican Senator Geoff Christiansen, a man of traditional family values who loved to vote against women’s autonomy and former high-paying client of Maribelle’s companionship, had outed her as an escort to all the world when caught in a cheating scandal.
I grimaced. The looming war of the realms had done a good job of burying the hellscape on earth. Though I’d spent weeks realm hopping, it had been only a few days by all mortal accounts since the Senator had made his announcement. Fortunately, it had bought me a few weeks off of work, which was convenient, given that I was flitting around the globe in my attempts to end the world.
I thanked the fan and slumped into Azrames, looking to all the world as if I had an unnaturally graceful predisposition for balancing.
He patted me supportively. “Hey, with any luck, the apocalypse will hit, and humanity will be gone by next week.”
I raised a lip, sneering at him from over my shoulder.
“I’m mostly kidding,” he said.
Silas contributed an unhelpful shrug in return.
I righted myself as the neon numbers began to count down, announcing the elevator’s descent once more. In the door’s golden reflection, I saw myself in black silk, hair twisted up in a high messy bun, strappy Prada bag over one shoulder.To my left stood gray and black and smoke and horns and Hell. To my right, golden eyes, white and beige leather, the frankincense and myrrh of Three Wise Men lore.
